Electronic musical instruments that can perform automatic arpeggios are well known, in which data of depressed keys in a keyboard are stored in shift registers, and the tones of the depressed keys are selected one-by-one by scanning the shift registers. However, the means of selecting the order of the tones are generally very simple and produce very repetitive, mechanical sounding musical phrases. Also well known are electronic musical instruments that provide more complicated methods of selecting data from the shift registers, such as basing the choice of data and direction of movement on previously received data. However, the resulting patterns, while more complicated, still sound repetitive and mechanical and are of limited variety.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,714,705 Kishimoto et. al., an arpeggiator is shown in which key depressions are scanned according to independent rhythm and scanning patterns. This reference also discloses a method whereby key data may be maintained in a buffer in the order entered by the user in a step-time fashion. However, the resulting arpeggios are thereby limited to producing only the notes the user has depressed, or the keys entered in a preentered fashion, thereby limiting the tonal complexity of the resulting arpeggios.
In the Computer Music Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter 1987, Zicarelli describes software that allows a musical pattern of notes to be played back with independent rhythm, duration, and accent patterns. However, the musical pattern of notes must be constructed in non-real-time, or entered from a keyboard in a cumbersome step-entry fashion. The rhythm, duration and accent pattern steps may contain a contiguous random range corresponding to values in a lookup table. However, no means of mathematically weighting the random choice is provided other than assigning more than one location in the lookup table to the same value. The values within the steps are not independently selectable, and there is no way to repeat a certain random sequence if desired. Furthermore, the rhythmic and tonal patterns resulting from the use of the disclosed randomness are unpredictable and difficult to utilize in a convincing musical fashion.
Electronic musical devices that allow a musical note to be repeated are also well known. However, the rhythmic interval of repetition is typically fixed, and the effect itself is of such simplicity as to rapidly become too familiar. Furthermore, if the repeated tones overlap, each overlap requires an additional voice of the tone module for processing, and problems result whereby the polyphony of the instrument is negatively affected by the number of repeats being generated. U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,616 issued to Matsubara, et al. shows a method for allowing repeated notes to be generated even if the input notes exceed the polyphony of an associated tone module. However, the resulting repeated notes do not have any associated polyphony control scheme. Furthermore, the repeated notes have a fixed rhythm and no pitch modification, resulting in a repeated effect that offers very little further diversity.
Electronic musical devices are also well known, in both hardware and software form, that are capable of recording and playing back a performance from a keyboard or other controller as MIDI data. However, many traditional musical effects such as guitar strumming and harp glissandi are difficult to program in a convincing fashion from a keyboard-type controller.
Electronic musical instruments that allow the user to bend the pitches of a note are also well known. The MIDI Standard provides for the pitch bend message, which is used to bend the pitch of a note or notes while they are being sustained. Many popular keyboards provide a lever or wheel that is used to bend the pitch in this manner. This can be used to imitate various bending techniques utilized by stringed instrument players (e.g. guitarists) and ethnic instrument players (e.g. the bending of a shakuhachi), among others. Furthermore, it can be used to simulate gliding from one pitch to the next. Many of these techniques generally require bending to a previously played pitch, bending to a pitch to be played next by the user, or bending to a precise musical pitch. However, it is traditionally difficult for a musician to perform these bending effects convincingly due to the nature of the pitch bend wheel or other provided lever and the degree of coordination required.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a means whereby musical effects of an exceedingly complex nature and almost infinite variety can be generated, such musical effects having a non-mechanical, non-repetitive nature and being created and varied in real-time.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a means of generating music randomly based on input source material, where the randomness is controlled in a musical fashion, and randomly generated musical sequences are repeatable as desired.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a means by which a non-musical user can trigger musically correct notes and effects during the playback of pre-recorded music.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of manipulating MIDI pitch bend data in a fashion that realistically recreates several challenging performance-based nuances of stringed and ethnic instruments, in addition to other useful and novel effects.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a means whereby musical effects traditionally difficult to achieve, such as harp glissandi, guitar strumming, and string-bending effects are made easy to realize by any user.